The City
by Smidgie
Summary: Elizabeth could not love the city. Missing thoughts for 'The Return', so do not read if you haven't seen that yet.


I watched 'The Return' last night and was almost crying when the nasty Ancients made our people leave. What puzzled me was although everyone else was moving on (or appeared to be) as best they could, Elizabeth wasn't, and I wondered why. Hence, this!

Please do not sue. I do not own Stargate, or Stargate Atlantis, because that belongs to some big recording studios, and I don't have any of those.

On with the story!

Elizabeth could not love the city.

Not in the way Rodney and Radek loved her, with the shared understanding of what made her tick. Elizabeth had seen Rodney when he thought no one was looking, crooning to his technology as though it could hear him, and beaming at it as though it reciprocated the emotion. Or Radek, petting a computer terminal with an absentminded though affectionate hand as he studied its information. Many of the scientists had picked up such gestures, especially the ones that had been at Atlantis from the beginning. No, Elizabeth could not love the city as they did.

But she could not love the city as John loved Atlantis, either. Almost like a lover, really, as all the possessors of the ATA gene did. Those born with it, she meant, not those who had received Carson's injection. They seemed, at times, a part of the city, for Atlantis did as they wished, recognising them as her masters without much more than a thought. Yet the city knew who held the power in that relationship. Elizabeth could almost see them, the acolytes of the goddess that was Atlantis (she couldn't help but think of the city as female). But she did not have that gene, and without it could not love the city as they did, on that deeply personal level scientific minds such as Rodney could not fathom.

Perhaps her relationship with Atlantis was closer to Carson's, a love hate duet where the city's secrets both shocked and excited the Scottish doctor. One needed only to recall his dislike of the chair at Antarctica to know his fear, but even Carson could not live in the city for over three years and not learn to love it's marvels. Elizabeth could sympathise with Carson, but his was not her view.

The Athosians revered the city as a gift from the 'Ancestors', a token of faith from nation they believed to be dead. They no longer thought the Ancients to be extinct – that view had been shot down with the return of those aboard the _Tria_ – but the city itself had not changed. Many of the Athosians could not understand the 'miracles' the city seemed to perversely delight in revealing just when they thought no more was possible. Over her time there Elizabeth learned to expect nothing in the Pegasus galaxy. Expecting the unexpected did not cover their experiences – time travel, alternate realities, creatures that existed through no mind should have ever been able to conceive of them – and anything remotely expected did not belong in the Pegasus galaxy. Elizabeth could not worship the city, she had seen Atlantis's good, bad, and ugly, and she knew that the city had flaws. She could not revere the city.

She could not admire the city, as many of the soldiers that used to be under her command did. They saw the city as a tool, to be used by those most qualified. They lived in Atlantis, they breathed her air, and in return for her protection, they defended her with their guns and their explosives and, if necessary, their lives. The city accepted these offerings as her due, but overall they were meaningless. The city had endured thousands of years of loss; what difference were a few more lives to something that could not die? Their deaths washed over her like a tide, like the storms that occasionally plagued her now she had risen from the depths, the storms full of bluster but never did damage she could not heal. The ants that tended her made certain of that. Elizabeth could not admire the city.

Elizabeth could not respect the city. She knew Ronon did, for it's power, for the damage it could do (and did!) to the Wraith. She knew Teyla did, for the assistance and protection it provided the Athosians on the mainland, and for it's potential to help their off-world allies. She knew Caldwell respected the city and herself as one and the same, as an ally. And though she knew this, Elizabeth could not feel the same way.

The Wraith hated the city, with a deep and abiding hatred that possessed them to their very bones. And although they would give much to possess Atlantis, they desired her only for the technology she possessed. Once they had culled all they could use from the city, they would destroy her, the last scar of an ancient battle wiped from the body of Wraith history. Atlantis stood for all the Ancients had believed in, their every conviction a cornerstone of the city. Atlantis was the antithesis of the Wraith, an anchor they were drawn to with a mixture of repulsion and fascination – what Atlantis herself felt for them. Elizabeth could not hate the beautiful, tranquil, secretive Atlantis, nor the Ancients who now inhabited their ancestral home. She could not hate the city

But Elizabeth could understand the city, in a way Rodney, with his calculations and formulas, could not. She understood Atlantis for her immovability, the tribute to the Ancients that had stood for time immemorial. She understood the city's quiet despair when one more soul that left through the Stargate did not return. It matched her own.

The city knew the pain of loss, of losing her original inhabitants, of losing the newcomers now. The city sang with the return of her people, a quiet harmony she thought she'd sometimes heard on sleepy afternoons where chaos danced death elsewhere and left Atlantis be. That quiet harmony expanded as panels opened and secrets that had lain dormant were uncovered, Atlantis's song building to a joyful crescendo.

But underneath was Atlantis's despair, the loss of the novice explorers Atlantis had made her own. She did not want them to go, did not want fracturing between her native people and the newcomers she had grown to love. Well, perhaps not love – how can a city feel such an emotion? – but she had grown… accustomed to their prescience, and felt loss at their absence, as one by one they returned to their home.

Elizabeth sighed.

She could not love the city for it's technology, but she could love how her people utilised it to save themselves, and others.

She could not love the city on a basic level, but she could appreciate how her people's love for the city, their adopted home, inspired them to fight for her.

She could not fear the city, on some undefinable level, only that where Carson felt fear, she felt exultation, joy, thanks for the miracles that let them live one more day.

She could not revere the city, but if she surveyed her with a newcomer's eyes, she felt once again that sense of awe she had felt when she first walked through the Stargate into the unknown.

She could not admire the city for it's own sake, but she could admire the Ancients who built her, their determination to create something that would stand a tribute to their intelligence for all eternity.

She could not respect the city, but she could feel the city's patience when they did not understand, the city's compassion when they lost one of their people, the city's anger when she was abused by heavy handed brutes who didn't know how to mange her. Elizabeth could feel the city's protection of those she felt were her own, and she could respect the hell out of that.

She could not hate the city, but she could realise how far those who did were willing to go to destroy Atlantis and all those who lived within her, and she could hate those in return who threatened the city and her people.

But Elizabeth could understand the city, and that seemed to be the strongest bond any of them could ever have.

Elizabeth sighed, and stepped through the Stargate.

Thank you to all readers! Please do me the honour of a review… .:gets down on hands and knees:. Please review! PLEASE!


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